>> reyna grande what is. [speaking spanish] >>guest: i corrupt thinking it was a reference to the united states. but because i grew up in a town surrounded by mountains and i did not know where the united states was to meet it

was the other side of the mountain. when my parents were gone working in the u.s., i will beget the mountains and sake my parents were of the other side of the mountains. that is what it was to me. >>host: wear reborn? >>guest: did mexico, southern mexico in a little town nobody has heard of that when i mentioned an odd couple quote but it was three hours from there. >>host: when did your parents come to the united states? how old were you? >>guest: and my father came 1977 and i was three years old and sent for my mother a few years later said she caved 1981 i was four and half. >>host: when did you come? t. when i came to the.states 1985. in may. i was nine and a half going on than.

>>host: what can you tell us about coming to the united states? >>guest: i was separated from my father for 80 years when he returned to mexico my siblings and i convinced him to bring him back here because he would not come back to mexico and we did not want to spend anymore time separated from him. so we begged him. with father did not want to bring me because i was nine and a half and he thought i could not make it across the border and we had to run illegally. so we took of us from mexico city and right on the border of tijuana. it was so long today bus ride because i had rarely been in any kind of car or public is rotation. i got carsick many, many times.

when we got to the border my father hired a coyote to bring us across. >>host: what do you remember? >>guest: how much walking there was. i remember having a lot of guilt because my father was right. i was too little and i would get tired and complain about the walking and i was thirsty or hungry or tired. my father ended up and carry me on his back and we were caught the first time by border control. i felt immense gilts because i thought it was my fault. >>host: what happens is when you get caught reyna grande? >>guest: we were loaded into a van with everyone else and taken to the border patrol offices. i don't remember a lot because we were not talk to

by border control, they would take my father into an office and i remembered waiting in saw hallway. weber very nice to us. they offered to give us a soda and we were waiting for our dad. it was a mixed feeling we were being treated very kindly but at the same time knowing they were keeping us from crossing and being able to have a chance to have our father back in our life. >>host: reyna grande, the third time? >>guest: the third time was very scary because my father decided to try in the dead of night hoping that would protect us. he was right for it was

pitch black. lot of times we were tripping on rocks and stumbling. then i remember most was the helicopter. it would have a searchlight in we were running for our lives looking for a place to hide crawling under the bushes. i remember the light fell on my shoe and i would pray so hard that the people had not seen me in the cockpit. luckily they didn't. so we made it across. >>host: where did you spend the first night? and. >>guest: by the time made it across the border was gone. we walked to the second coyote's house and he was responsible for driving us to l.a.. he made a slide down the back seat and would not let us set up because we could still be pulled over by

border patrol. so we spend the whole car ride home lying down. not until we got to sandy and and he said you can get up now. just seeing the things outside the window was amazing. i remember the palm trees. we did not have those. the streets that seemed to never end and the buildings to reach this guy, it was amazing. really amazing. >>host: where did you live when you first got here? >>guest: first in l.a. i lived in highland park, northeast los angeles predominately latino. >>host: most the legal? >>guest: i think it was a combination. of lot of immigrant families also legal and illegal. >>host: how did the legal

spew the illegals? >>guest: i am not too sure about that. as a child, i don't think i was too aware of that kind of response from the adults. but i do remember being shocked at school that most of the kids were turks skin and looked like me and have last names like garcia and could speak a language i could not speak. that was shocking because they looked exactly like me but they weren't. that was the first time i was really aware of the fact there were latinos but they were different from me. >>host: you were in esl

sauces? english as a second language? was that a second-class citizen type? >>guest: yes. the esl student is who you are and people treat you like the, etc.. definitely us sense of separation the kids that speak english hangout and that esl kids would hang out there that esl classroom. i wanted to fit and that could not but i worked very hard to finish my esl class's to get out of the program. by the time i was in eighth grade i was enrolled in regular eighth grade english >>host: if there is a pitcher we will show reyna grande you with a saxophone.

tell us the story. >> that was something i discovered at burbank a junior high school in seventh grade. my counselor in rolled meat and banned. not something i chose. and elective van day put me there. i was so lucky to have them put in that class the cousin i walked in there my teacher said which instrument do you want to pay? i thought i had to pay per eyes of commons does it cost? he said it does not cost anything. it seemed like the whole world opened up to me i could choose whichever i wanted eyes of the saxophone that is the one i wanted. >>host: do you still play today? >>guest: i don't play any more and have not played since i graduated from city college.

and then there was no marching band. but then i discovered other things with film and video and dance and other things but i really messed of saxophone but one of my teachers pulled me aside she said it is good york creative to learn new saying's but you'd need to choose one thing to focus on or you will be a jack of all trades. i went home and is thought to what can i not live without? that is when i decided right team is the one thing i could not live without so i gave up everything else. >>host: you are an award winning novelist winning a

booker award 2007, a dancing with butterflies the international latino booker award 2010 and this is your first nonfiction. this is very personal. >>guest: extremely personal. yes. that is the only way i know how to right to. even with fiction it is inspired by personal experiences. many times i was afraid to go there because it was extremely personal and not just writing about myself, my family, my parents, many times i felt a was writing things that i shouldn't but then i felt but then i felt i had to be

honest with the story but to turn my pain and fear into strings the peseta's weakness. >>host: reyna grande did you write in english or spanish? >>guest: i write in english first. unfortunately i was so obsessed with english i neglected my native town. for many, many years all i did is eat and breathe in english to the point* that when i got to college i was a writing tudor and tutoring native english speakers than teaching them how to write better english. but in college and was exposed spanish for spanish speakers had its successes and i said i will reclaim my native tongue but i write in english because it is so

natural to me. i don't have to think about the language or vocabulary when i am writing. trying to write in spanish and have to pick up the dictionary and that pulls me out of the story because i have to think of the vocabulary. as a compromise a right everything in english then do my own translation. i translated it myself and then it will be published in spanish next year. >>host: t. your novel so well in the spanish language? >>guest: not as well as english because i think that is most books that are published here in spanish i think part of that is because their leaders for

spanish books cannot afford to buy a book and don't have access to the books. the especially low income communities. there is no bookstores and where. and it is hard to get access to the books. >>host: we're talking with reyna grande t. lavalin -- "the distance between us" a memoir". >>host: tell us about the sanitation check on you. >>guest: yes. when i came to the elementary and fifth grade, one day the owners showed up and the teacher said she came to inspect the kids for lice. i was shocked.

i could not -- i could understand in mexico we were all pork kids coming to school barefoot and dirty and we all had lice but in l.a. i did not expect there to be lice and for a second i thought maybe they crossed the border illegally like i had and was inspected and it turned out i had lice. i was so afraid to go home to tell my dad because i did not want him to think of was still the dirty little girl he left behind in mexico. i thought he would beat me as well because that was his favorite way to discipline us. but it turned out to my father was not angry at me and did not blame me and did not beat me. it was a beautiful moment

because he took me out to the yard and he looked for lice and clean out my hair and spent two hours looking through my hair and he was so gentle when he did it. it was a beautiful moment for me. and telling me stories when i was a baby of course, i did not remember before he came to the u.s. and left me in mexico he told me every time he would come home for lunch, i would be waiting outside with a bowl and and and i would tell him to give me a bass. nobody could base me except for him. said he would spend his lunch hour giving me a bath instead of eating and he said i would not have it any other way. when he told me that, i don't know, i thought it was

a beautiful moment i got to share with him. >>host: that is one of the few in your book that is tender and beautiful about your father. >>guest: yes. he was a very complicated man. he was suffering from alcoholism and also with the bad upbringing. his parents were very abusive toward him and unfortunately he repeated the same cycle with us. but as i was writing a memoir" and writing aboutr" andt those hard and painful memoir" and writing about those hard and painful moments and suffering from of lot of abuse i hope i get to revisit the happy memories. one is that my father taught me to value education. he was such a tyrant and a

threat in me to go back to mexico. it really was scary. i believe tim. i did not want to go back. i wanted to make him proud and because i a day than to break in one negative bring me i felt i owed him that i did not want him to say i should not have brought you. that is what motivated me to do well in school for the things that i wanted to do because i did not want to hear that ever. he never said that. he didn't but as i was writing the book i wanted to make sure he did not come across as the villain. i wanted to give him his

humanity. he had great things, my dad. also dealing with a lot of difficulties that unfortunately affected our relationship. >>host: you talk about how you wanted to go to church one sunday and he held up the budweiser saying this is my god. >>guest: he died from liver cancer last year. he was diagnosed with cirrhosis in 1993 and never told us and kept drinking. he actually gave up drinking in the late nineties and became a very religious. a seventh-day adventist. but he never got himself to act. and a year-and-a-half ago they told him he had liver cancer. he really held on to the hope that he would get

better or get a transplant but he never came out of the hospital. >>host: did his sobering up change your relationship? >>guest: not too much because by the time he sobered up, things had gotten way too bad. even though he had sobered up, he was still very distant. he traded one obsession to another going from an alcoholic to being a religious fanatic. i remember a lot of times my siblings and i would not come to our family gatherings because he had to be at church. deal is said to be at church and we thought we lose either way alcoholic or religion may lose anyway because he will never make us his priority.

i remember when i got married he was going to walk me down the aisle and was looking at the clock say what time will this wedding start? i have to go to my church. hurry up. i was so hurt. a only get married once. your church will always be there but he kept looking at his clock and we we're done with the ceremony he took off right after that. he stayed at the reception for a little bit but i felt so horrible will whole time that i will never be more important to my father than other things. it hurt me a lot. >>host: where does your mother figure? >>guest: i hardly talk about my mother. i have a lot of issues with my mother if you read a memoir" you will know why.

she is still alive and in l.a.. she lives about 20 minutes away. now that i have become a writer and i have to travel lot, i have to say that has helped me to have a better relationship with her because right now, she is with my children and comes over to take care of them. she tries to help me out when she can. it helps me to understand her having my own children. i can understand now what it is like to be torn between the mother and a woman with her own dreams and aspirations. every time i have to leave the house and my daughter asks how long i will be gone i remember my mother and how i would ask how long she

would be gone. i really do understand how hard it is to be torn into and to right by your kids but also go into the world to pursue your own dreams. i have a better relationship not with my mother but there is emotional distance and they think there always will be. >>host: because sometimes your mother would be gone for years. >>guest: did she came to the u.s. and you did not know it? >> yes. and my mother has not changed. she is still like that where she does things and we don't fit into the equations sometimes. lead has been a struggle to get her to be a little more motherly.

but at this point* we except that is the way she is and we take her as she is. i think it helps because then we're not disappointed. but i do hope that she could be a better grandmother. i know people change. my a good grandmother my mother said she was not a good mother to her but to us the most wonderful grandmother in the world. i hope that is saw my children feel for her. that is all i want for my kids to have a good relationship with her. >>host: has your mother read this book reyna grande? >>guest: she has not because it is an english. my mother does not speak english. she knows someone because i

told her this is a story about my childhood and growing up in the u.s. and i ride about you and dad died don't think she really understands how i saw her as a daughter and how her actions determined my childhood and how that was his defined by her absence. i don't think she'll understand that. i am curious what she will say when the spanish version comes out. [laughter] >>host: the distance between us has anyone compared s -- and it was ashes. >>guest: and the reviewer for the "l.a. times"

compared it to that with his review. i was beyond honored even to be in the same sentence as angeles ashes. it is one of my favorite books and for someone to say it is that of the immigrant experience i was thrilled. there are similarities we both talk about poverty and relationships with parents and struggling to overcome all the obstacles. and to go above and beyond what we ever could. there on many similarities although one of the best things about anglea's ashes is there is so much humor

that balances on all of the depressing stuff. and i am not a very humorous unfortunately. i would love to write more humor in my work but i write from a very deep place that has mostly pain and sadness. that is where my writing comes from. i was thinking of one of my idols and how similar we are in that way because she's also painted from a place of pain. that is the way i write. when i am happy i cannot write. that is well i tell my husband because he is wonderful. i say you have to make me miserable. [laughter]

so sometimes it is very hard to right when i feel good. >>host: t. you think your experience coming across the border, a growing up the way you did as the illegal immigrant is that a common experience reyna grande? >>guest: it is definitely very common. the specially as a child left behind and separated and brought here as a child is very common. when i was researching this topic i learned 80 percent of latin american children in u.s. schools are separated from a parent in the process of migration. that is a lot of kids separated from parents who are coming here as the undocumented immigrants. it is not unique but there is not an awareness or

people talk about immigration very seldom do they consider the other side of immigration which is about the children who are left behind who come later to be reunited with their parents. we don't talk about how immigration breaks up families and takes a toll on the whole family. this is one of the reasons why i want to write about this. it is from experience that scarred me that shaped the woman i am today. also with the dreamers dreamers, undocumented people who are fighting to get their legal status, it is an important story to give people in sight what their situation might be like.

i talk about the fact my family benefited from the amnesty of 1986. i had a green card by the time i was 14. the moment i got the green card the whole world opened up to me and some impossibilities came my way i could jump on because of my green card. i would love to see this happen and choose the dreamers to give them the chance to pursue there dreams and give back to society. they will pay everything back the way i have spent paying back their writing and the work that i do. i want to see that happen to them. >>host: rear talking with reyna grande, et "the distance between us" a memoir" simon & schuster. booker t. the on c-span2.

>>host: good evening i am one of the founders of politics and prose. as you can see we have c-span ears of -- here. is the microphone working?

just one is here to ask questions. if you need access you can go around back. i want to welcome david quammen who has, and this evening to talk about his new book "spillover" the first time he has been here he lives and those men montana. he has written many books including the song of the dodo that one at the metal for natural history writing. he has honored degrees in colorado college and montana state university where he served as the professor of western american studies. he also won the national magazine award three times for articles including

"esquire", the atlantic and "rolling stone." the third magazine award was for a "national geographic" story. and now he has the title contributing writer to which requires m to right to three articles per year for "national geographic." he describes his field as evolutionary biology, a theoretical ecology and conservation but after this evening i hope you will have as much appreciation for his physical strength and stamina for his writing talents. he tracks indiana jones

style through rain forest that most of us would not want to step foot and. tonight you'll learn a new word. infectious diseases originated in animals and spread to humans. if you read the hot sun -- hot zone you had an early exposure to this frightening scenario that david has elaborated on a great deal in his new book "spillover." "publishers weekly" gave it a star review call mac a frightening but critically important book for anyone interested in learning about the prospect of the world's

next major pandemic quote. year is speenine. [applause] >>guest: thank you barbara. it is nice to be here at politics and prose. have not been here before. i lived too far away and don't publish too often. it takes me six or eight years to get this done. i will talk informally for about 20 for 25 minutes about the booker and the subject and to some extent summarizing and then may well hear from you. as barbara explained scary

new emerging diseases and where they emerge from it comes from my life, nonhuman animals and and in particular other than our domesticated animals. if you have then following certain stories you know, one point* of entry it is the newspaper itself. you heard about the virus that killed three people visiting yosemite this summer. people have been dying in north texas of west nile fever. in dallas a long 15 people died since july. there has been at an ebola outbreak again the

democratic republic of the condo has the ebola outbreak that has killed three dozen people and still going on. therecratic republic of the condo has the ebola outbreak that has killed three dozen people and still going on. there is another outbreak in you gone that unrelated to the spillover from the democratic republic of the condo. these things are happening. with the outbreaks and small crisis. there is a virus said a merged that closely resembles the of sars virus that really scared said disease experts in in 2003. this new virus added the arabian peninsula has only killed one person, put another man in a hospital in

britain but scientists all over the world are watching carefully because they know the next big one could look like that. it is a drumbeat. those diseases that i mentioned have two things in common. they come out of wildlife, from nonhuman animals and their caused by viruses. that is the scariest of the phenomenon. the scientist have a fancy name they call the animal infections zoan knows these that to be an infection bacteria protozoan the creatures that causes

malaria of fungus or a worm something that causes mad cow disease. but usually it is a virus they don't always causes disease. they become harmless passengers. of passages could diuresis it has a gruesome name. where you can find it to. with all due respect to the people who'd died there are a lot of deaths in the book. but still i did not want the

booktv just a painful grissom duty but also a pleasurable reading experience and a page turner with mystery and discovery nes even some humor. it is not a very funny book but hopefully the funniest book about ebola that you ever read. [laughter] when they pass into humans they are harmless but often they are not. if the zoonosis passes through then it is called a zoonosis disease.

60 percent are everything comes from somewhere the other 40% of zoonosis origin in the broader sense for instance, and measles is only a disease of humans. where did it come from? a virus like lee coming from left animals in africa but has been in humans long enough and has evolved and become adapted specifically to humans so is different enough a and functions as a completely human virus. but the 60 percent considered zoonotic pass back and forth from animals to humans either on a continuing basis or have done so recently. that includes things like

ebola, alternate -- influenza, west nile virus, hiv. i talked at some length of the ecological origins of the aids pandemic. we now know that pandemic strain of hiv past from a single chimpanzee to a single human in a fairly small corner of southeastern cameron in africa. 19 '08 or earlier because there are some wonderful scientists who have worked on the molecular genetics of viruses that are precursors to hiv that in gems and monkeys were the diversity of hiv one group them and

these scientists have managed to locate the these scientists have managed to locate the spillover event with a high degree of confidence they have located to southeastern cameron, one chimpanzee, one human presumably the human who killed a the chimpanzee then cut himself and got blood to the lead contact when butchering for food in the early 20th century around or before 1908. michael and beatrice are eartha scientist who have done network. there are these diseases and they spill over, zoonotic and another technical term is a reservoir host.

that is the kind of animal which the above or virus lives intimately, permanently, inc onspicuously without causing disease or mayhem. in that particular creature. why doesn't live there non destructively? probably because it has been in that species millions of years and the accommodation has evolved. the virus and reservoir host replicate but not catechist likely but slowly and doesn't generally caused symptoms. it is invisible and hides. then something happens, humans kill and eat that reservoir hose are coming contact with it, i'll

tell you a couple of stories how it can happen. the reservoir host sheds the virus and gets into humans then it becomes zoonotic one of the things a scientist do is study the field and focus on the different diseases. first half to identify the reservoir house. new disease in asia killing takes then paid farmers and pig butchers and pork sellers. they isolated a virus and the human victims and the p.i.g.s. have the same virus. this is a true case 1988. that was named after a particular village in malaysia. then they went looking for the reservoir host. where was it? it was in large fruit baths

the kind that are called the flying fox. how did the spillover ocher? they finally tracked it through the route to and here's what happened. people were cutting down forests, for development, agriculture, the timber, cutting down the forest destroyed their fruit bat habitat favor displaced in had to go look summer else has started to go closer to the human settlements. they were attracted to the orchards with the fruit trees planted by humans. some of those were on pig farms which was the second stream of income running large scale pig farms on the peninsula of malaysia. son even planted mink coat

trees and another fruit tree called the water apple to the open air pigsty even shaving them in some cases. the bats come to the fruit trees they eat the fruit and they dropped the pulp into the pig sty and dropped the feces and their year-end and their virus and the p.i.g.s. pick up and the p.i.g.s. get sick and in the pigs' is the infectious respiratory disease they are coughing and barking and passing and from one to another but they are not dying. but it is a horrendous agricultural problem. then it gets into humans and kills 109 people causes the government of malaysia to kill of all the p.i.g.s.

coming from infected farms. some farms people. coming from infected farms. some farms people were so scared that they were abandoning their own farms running away one point* p.i.g.s. were running loose through abandoned villages, like a nightmare scenario but it really happened. almost like the book of exodus infectious p.i.g.s. running wild and one fellow called it the 1 mile barking cough because you could hear them coming. you knew your pig farm would be next. encephalitis is the disease in humans. this is what they do, try to solve the ecology and evolutionary biology. where does the virus live?

what is the reservoir host? having humans come in contact? water they doing and it is that hot disruption that causes the of spillover that some time is the intermediate animals. and australia the fibrous falls out of fats and gets into the horse's. they are referred to as the amplifier host it reproduces abundantly in then then gets into people. the case in australia it is named after a suburb of brisbane that is a racing suburb. 1994 in the stable sources said they started to die. why? poisonous be? a veterinarian, a horse

trainer and a stable and tried to save the horses. a stable form and got sick and went home with a fluid a trader got sick with a very bad flu and the veterinarian never got sick. the trainer died the isolated virus from the horses they found a new virus and named it hand drafter the suburb. they did disease detection did where did it come from? is the chief detective on this case was of veterinarian during a ph.d. on ecology sampling cankers, wombats, mice, rats , in sex and he did not find the virus. finally he sampled the fruit bats and found the virus

that had matched. and they named to the virus progress has not killed very many and does not pass from human to human but it is a knock on the door as a reminder where these things come from, how they emerge, why they spillover. the fact they're not independent case is the part of a pattern that reflects what we are doing on the planet, and in some cases it has an outbreak that comes to an end and in other cases cause widespread suffering and death. hiv case in point*. i might stop there to see if

people have questions. there is a lot of other points to touch on but let me hear from you and see what you would like to hear about. >> my name is rick, i have a toasty warm memory of swimming at bozeman hot springs. >> it is still there. >> i imagine it is a small number but what percentage are pathogenic? >>guest: nobody knows how many viruses there are. no. we talk about ed wilson nor others trying to estimate how many living species on planet earth. nobody knows how many vertebrae or in vertebrate animals, plants, a fun guy there are with any precision

i have estimates between 8 million of 000 million species but then with virus and bacteria common of aquino's. >> a percentage of viruses that come out maybe a small percentage. those that are the exception are inconsequential. >> i enjoyed your book about the dodo very much i used it to in a class but i have a question about the study of the genealogy of these. using the human genome from the pastor there is evidence that may be causing problems and human population but now

is harmless because the survivors have reproduced and that is all there is left. looking back for old pandemic saw to trace disease that way? >>host: i have not seen much on that. one of the things that is very interesting to me is tracing some things they call the endogenous retrovirus. hiv is they insert themselves permanently into the human genome maybe they have functions may be junk dna but they are there with past infections a to be recognized as one of the iris family or another family. that is one.

with the iranian relationship with the infections of the deep past, i cannot point* he to any particular work i have come across it would have to be speculative to a certain degree. i cannot tell you much more than that. >> we heard you speak about different diseases that cause deaths and the examples where dozens or hundreds or thousands but the reaction seemed like the local government was overreacting. recently in texas there was the west nile virus detected

and they started spraying the swampy areas with airplanes. are we doing more harm trying to solve these issues with only hundreds better dying when there others setter killing millions? and these are so exotic but then we get into shock and then the reaction is too much. >>host: i hear you asking two questions. are we doing some things that cause more harm than good? also, are we taking these things out of proportion with the damage that they do? i will answer the second one first. i ask the same thing of a fellow who studies the virus that dimension and it also

occurs in bangladesh with a different story because it is muslim so there are not pork farms. it does not pass to the pig is the amplifier but is transmitted into broad date palm sap that the people drink and the way it is tapped, and that the bats leave their waste in the pots and the people drink it. i talk to a fellow named steve from the ctc and asked the same thing. there are hundreds of thousands of children in bangladesh dying of bacterial diarrhea and bacterial pneumonia in bangladesh. he was pleased that the cholera hospital. these diseases have been murderous over centuries. why bother with this virus

that kills a few dozen each year when you have these other diseases? he told me that this is such a nasty diseases and has such potential we cannot ignore it simply because it is no small it could be large. yes it is important to take the old fashioned diseases like cholera seriously and keep it in perspective but also vigilant about the new emerging diseases because in 1981 we had it is seized emerge called aids that was one of the influenza emerging new each year and it is also capable to kill millions. that is the response i have heard wide to take the small boutique diseases very seriously. so what we do to stop or

contain, in some cases, we probably do more harm than good. to panting and what they are spraying with comic you -- we have done so much damage but there are cases when governments have taken rigorous action and this has been important and beneficial. you may have heard when he got to hong kong he was faster virus and it killed 10 percent of those that it affected and spread quickly

but better than 10% then it was stopped. in one of the book reviews they said why does he take sars so seriously? it turned out. it did not turn now. it was stopped by early diagnostic scientific work in the field and in the laboratory with firm health measures. containment and isolation isolation, the right equipment and personal protection to the health care workers so that it did not go further. . .